I told Kira that in life, we often get back more than expected by wishing for someone else. I asked her what she’d like Mary to bring for someone else, and our Kira answered, “I want Tony (my brother) to have a train.” Let me clarify that she meant a toy train. I saw the episode when you gave away the train load of cars.

Talking to a young co-worker the other day, I expected the teenage generation to have fully embraced recycling. I was wrong. Instead of supporting my pro-recycling stance, he came back ambivalent with a statistic that only 40 percent of goods...